The Things They Don't Tell You About Being Lonely
by Little Miss AiLy
Summary: It sucks horribly, like a particularly bad whore, like the kind you'd only pick up if you were horribly drunk, horribly poor, and horribly stupid. Slash, Charles Xavier  Professor X  / Erik Lensherr  Magneto , X-men: First Class -based, spoiler warning.


**The Things They Don't Tell You About Being Lonely**

_**An X-men: First Class Fanfiction**_ by Little Miss AiLy

_Rating: T_

_Warnings: mild cursing and homosexual relationships, in case you didn't get that from the summary._

_Pairings: Charles Xavier (Professor X) / Erik Lensherr (Magneto)_

_Summary: _It sucks horribly, like a particularly bad whore, like the kind you'd only pick up if you were horribly drunk, horribly poor, and horribly stupid. Slash, Charles Xavier (Professor X) / Erik Lensherr (Magneto), X-men: First Class -based, spoiler warning.

_Author's Note:__  
><em>This was originally written for the X-men: First Class Kink Meme. Also, in my head!canon, Moira helped deliver him back from the hospital and promptly gets her memory erased that day (the kiss scene).

Charles is in the hospital for almost two weeks before he is pronounced well enough to go home, with only minimal telepathic coercion. Everyone thinks that he is still in shock from losing his legs, and to some degree he is, but mostly he feels nothing. The wheelchair takes no time to get used to. After all, it is only logical that he'd have to get one and there is no need to fight logic.

Moira tries to act the same as before, but there is no mistaking the feelings of pity that pour off of her. He almost doesn't regret wiping her memory if only so he doesn't have to deal with her waves of pity washing into his head. It is times like this that he wishes he controls his telepathy half as well as everyone is convinced he can. Everyone in the mansion is unintentionally projecting their worries of him at him, and he can't bare it.

After brushing off invitations to go a town over to celebrate his hospital release with the rest of the "family" - _broken family_, he thinks bitterly - he pulls himself into his bed for the first time in twelve days and four hours. He's just getting comfortable when his hand brushes on cloth that is neither his bedding nor his bedclothes. His tired mind doesn't let him ignore it the way he wishes he could - the way he knows he _should_ - because he already knows what it is without seeing it. _Erik's bed shirt_. He almost starts to think he is reading some sort of memory off of it, like it has an emotional signature and he can tap into it like a mind, but he knows he really can't as he isn't an empath. (Maybe, if he'd been an empath, he could've stopped everything that had happened and sleep would be a well-earned prize rather than a tortured escape.) His hand closes tightly over the bed shirt, he pulls it to his chest, and that night he falls asleep with the smell of Erik at his chest.

When he awakes in the morning, he almost swears he can feel the warmth in the bed, as if Erik had simply woken up before him like he always has and that he'll poke his head out of the attached bathroom any minute now, lowering his head bashfully despite nearly half a year of having woken up together in the same way. Charles almost believes it's true until he pushes himself up from his bed and finds Erik's shirt still in his curled fist and no feeling in his legs. The sudden force into remembrance causes him to drop back onto the bed. He's fairly certain he doesn't want to bother getting up today. Most likely, everyone else in the mansion is still recovering from hangovers (illegal on Sean's part, but Charles isn't one to preach whether or not he's feeling depressed).

Alex brings him food at the appropriate times for lunch and dinner, Hank brings in his medications after he's finished eating as is prescribed, and Sean checks on him in the hours in between under the guise of asking him about new things he's discovered (again) within the house or some new trick he's mastered (again) with his powers. At around eight in the evening, Charles has a glass of a certain rum he'd once only drank because Erik did. Then he sits in his bed and projects whatever thoughts come to mind at Erik until he falls asleep from the alcohol and exhaustion. He does so with Erik's shirt curled tightly in his hand, as if it'll disappear if he doesn't clutch it for all he's worth. The weeks drag on in a similar pattern.

A few weeks or months later, one Saturday comes and Charles decides "why the fuck not" he'll go out drinking with the boys tonight. Hank is designated driver, as always, and Sean gets as illegally drunk as he ever does. Charles learns that Alex is a silly drunk, draping himself over Hank and admitting that he only teased him because he knows no other way to act around people who intimidate him. Sean is a surprisingly calm drunk, with the exception of the occasional high-pitched tittering that gets higher each time it happens and nearly shatters a glass, save for Hank poking a specific pressure point on Sean's throat that silences him for the night. Hank only gets slightly buzzed and thus remains the same as ever, though Alex whispers - more like slurs - into Charles's ear that Hank is more of a bi-polar drunk, drifting between raucous joking and hysterical sobbing. Charles is glad that he doesn't have to see that side of him.

Charles doesn't get well and truly drunk while on the town with them. It's not until he gets to his bedroom that night, sees the rum bottle in his sitting room cabinet and the shirt on his bed, that he decides it's time to get damn well pissed. As he drinks the night away, he projects to Erik as always.

Something feels different this day. Usually it feels like talking to a wall since Charles knows that Erik is just too defensive to take off that bloody helmet any time soon, but today it's like the wall is thinner or that maybe it's filled with holes or has an open window or maybe not even there. Charles accounts it to the drink. After all, he knows Erik, and he's not going to stop running away any time soon.

_I'm horribly drunk, Erik. If you were here, you'd either laugh at me in that way that scares everyone but me, or you'd be tucking this tumbler in my hand away in your bedside drawer and locking the bottle away on the top-most shelf, since I can't reach it, and then tuck me into bed too. __  
><em>_You know how you told me that I speak and project with amazing clarity when I'm drunk? Well you're right, and it sucks, Erik. It sucks horribly, like a particularly bad whore, like the kind you'd only pick up if you were horribly drunk, horribly poor, and horribly stupid. I'm only the former-most, Erik. Why does it suck so bad then? __  
><em>_Did you know I've been slowly draining your bottle of rum over all this time? I have about a glass every night. I think I may try to finish it tonight, as I'm talking to you, like I always do, even though you can't hear me, don't want to hear me. __  
><em>_Why does it hurt so much to think that Erik? I don't generally care whether or not people want to hear me out. I know I'm intelligent and I know my own worth, but with you all I want is to be assured that I mean something.__  
><em>_I also fall asleep with your shirt every night. Your pants and socks are still folded neatly and tucked under your pillow on our bed. Erik, do you remember the morning I accidentally pulled on your bed shirt and was so perplexed by how the hem reached half-way down my thighs? I still think of the fond smile you tried to hide behind your hand as I padded into the bathroom, proclaiming "Erik, look at the shirt I'm wearing." There was toothpaste on the corner of your mouth. I just turned and kissed the other side.__  
><em>_Erik, I don't know how to sleep any other way now. I don't know how to fall asleep besides exhausting myself with projecting at you and letting the alcohol set in.__  
><em>_I hate my bed, Erik. It reminds me of you, Erik. I also love my bed, Erik. It reminds me of you, Erik. It's just so difficult now, Erik. It's so difficult having to fall asleep and having to wake up every morning knowing that I'm not whole the same way I was with you here. It's even worse knowing that it's my own fault that I'm so alone now.__  
><em>_Erik, that's the thing they never tell you about being lonely: that eventually you have to realize how much of that loneliness is your own fault and that's the part that hurts the most.__  
><em>_Erik, what if I had just taken your hand, went with you instead? Do you think we could've talked more? Do you think we could've worked it out? Erik, do you think I turned you down too quickly? Do you think I lost faith in you too soon?__  
><em>_Erik, it's all my fault. Erik, I just miss you so damn much. Erik, you don't have to agree with me. You just have to come back. Erik, I didn't tell you how much I love you and I didn't tell you that I loved you at all enough times. Erik, come back, please. Erik, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I love you, Erik.__  
><em>_I'm so sorry. I love you. I'm so sorry. I love you. I'm so sorry. I love you._

Charles falls asleep soon after that. He doesn't notice that he's mistakenly worn Erik's bed shirt or that the shirt he's been clutching and wiping his tears into is his own bed shirt. As he falls asleep, he almost feels like there's someone else there. He's getting the traces of purposefully projected thoughts, but he knows that's impossible. He only ever taught Raven and Erik to project thoughts on purpose, and neither of them is in his life anymore. He thinks he feels a kiss on his cheek, but surely that's just his drunken imagination confused by his own tears. It feels like there are arms around his shoulders and a warm, long, perfect body pressed into his back, but that could just be the body pillow he got a few days back.

Charles dreams about something other than ithat beach/i for the first time since that time. All night, he swears he hears Erik's voice breaking into his mind. And all Erik says is, _You did nothing wrong, Charles. I am sorry. I love you. I'm back_.

In the morning, Charles's head surprisingly does not hurt. His face doesn't have the traces of dried tear streaks. He is tucked in much more neatly than he ever is, depressed and drunk or neither. The crystal tumbler is nowhere in sight and the now nearly empty bottle of rum is locked on the top-most shelf of the cabinet. Erik's side of the bed has odd crumples, as if laid in all night. Erik's pillow still has the faint impressions of a head and there are dark hairs there that Charles just knows aren't his. When Charles over-turns the pillow, Erik's sleep socks and sleep pants are gone. Charles opens the drawer of Erik's bedside table as if it may contain a motion-sensitive bomb. The crystal tumbler inside catches the light of the barely cracked blinds, cracked just as Erik always did. Charles strains his ears, though he doesn't need to as the toilet loudly flushes at that moment and the sound of lightly running water from the sink starts just seconds later. Charles pulls himself as quietly as possible into his wheelchair and nearly silently rolls over to his bathroom door, glad that he'd asked Hank to oil the wheels.

At the left-most sink, _Erik's sink_, the water is running and Charles sees the sliver of a badly hidden smile with toothpaste in one corner. The door creaks open and all Charles can say is, "Erik, look at the shirt I'm wearing."

**End**


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